The exercise asks why I think the police chief reacted to the mural the way that he did. The book was very vague on this point (probably to encourage our own thoughts in this exercise) but its tone was bitter. Personally I don't think the police chief was completely out of line. Religious imagery is always problematic in a public setting, especially in such a project that intends to represent an entire community; a community that does not necessarily agree, as a whole, with the artists' religious views. Even if the chief did not exactly have this concern in mind, it was probably a matter of policy for him not to endorse any religion at all. Doing so would be an abuse of his power as a government official (and don't even get me started on how much higher officials in this country do it anyway).
That said, there was probably not a single figure that could be agreed upon as a hero by the entire Latino community. We tend to single out religion because it is a sore spot for many people, but the fact of the matter is, we can never express the feelings of an entire community at once. This is where the nature of the "I" and the "we" comes in. The artists were chosen to express their ideas, keeping in mind that they are representing the community, but in the end the ideas come from the individuals. They can try to combine them and work together to find compromises, but to completely alter their vision and water down their ideas would be unfair to themselves and also an untrue representation of the community to which they belong.
I think that a better way to handle the situation that arose would have been to communicate with all parties involved at an earlier stage. If the students and artists had spoken to the police chief when they had first come up with the design, they would not have been so attached to it yet and could have discussed changing it or tried to persuade the police chief with no hard feelings.
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